Reading passage 1

A. Aficionados of Hollywood Westerns know all about the legal code that says "shoot first, ask questions later". But now, Republican legislators in Texas spiritual home of the six-shooter and a John Wayne-style frontier spirit wants to enshrine the principle into law. Sponsors of a new bill in the state legislature call it the Castle Doctrine - the idea that anyone invading your home or threatening your safety deserves everything they have coming to them. Critics are already calling it the "shoot thy neighbour" law and questioning whether Texas, of all places, really needs to give its citizens further encouragement to take matters of crime and punishment into their own hands. B. "I believe Texans who are attacked in their homes, their businesses, their vehicles or anywhere else have a right to defend themselves from attack without fear of being prosecuted and face possible civil suits alleging wrongful injury or death," Texas Senator Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio home to The Alamo - said recently in support of the bill. C. "You've got to assume a criminal's not there to buy girl scout cookies; you could be harmed," the bill's other sponsor, Texas Representative Joe Driver told The Los Angeles Times. "You should be able to meet force with force without getting in trouble." In theory, Texas law obliges citizens under attack to consider a retreat before opening fire. In practice, prosecutors and legal experts find it hard to recall a case where a citizen shooting in self-defence got into trouble for doing so. D. "I've lived in Texas 30-plus years and I'd be astounded to hear of a Texas jury that convicted someone who blasted a guy who was in his house," said Professor Jerry Dowling of Sam Houston State University. This is a state where businesses and home owners have signs that read "We don't call 911" [the US emergency phone number] next to a large picture of a rifle. A few years ago, when ranch owners along the Rio Grande became upset at the number of Mexican immigrants on their land, they started shooting at them, and won the overwhelming support of their neighbours, even as they created a major international incident. E. Still, the bill shows every sign of being passed into law. In the State Senate, 27 of the 31 members have signed on as co-sponsors. In the House, two-thirds of the 150 members have indicated their support for it. The inspiration for the legislation comes less from fears for public safety than it does from pressure from the National Rifle Association, the powerful US gun lobby. Over the past two years, the NRA has inspired similar shoot-first laws in 15 other states, including Florida where legislators are now having serious second thoughts after the killing of a nine-year-old girl who was an innocent bystander caught in a shoot-out in a gang-ridden neighbourhood of Miami. The Florida law theoretically offers

immunity to both sides in the shoot-out on the grounds that they were firing in self-defence. F. Texas liberals - a small but noisy breed - have wasted no time making merciless fun of their state representatives, not least because one of the buildings where the Castle Doctrine would apply is the state Capitol. That, wrote an alternative publication in Austin called In The Pink, "could prove challenging for lobbyists". G. Advocates of gun-control, meanwhile, are worried the new law will do nothing to protect genuine victims of crime. "The current laws won't throw someone into jail for legitimate self-defence," said Zach Ragbourn, chair of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "Monkeying with the law can be dangerous. It could lead to gun fights and the death of innocent people". Source: The New York Times Questions You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1 to 14 which are based on Reading Passage 1 Questions 1 to 7 Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs A G. From the list of headings below, choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph. Write the appropriate numbers I ix in boxes 1 7 on your answer sheet.

i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix.

The Texans safety. The hooligans arent soft. Shoot first, ask questions later. The Texans dont call police. The strategy and its effect. The necessity of the bill. The new law. Monkeying with the law 1 Paragraph A can be 2 dangerous. Paragraph B 3 Paragraph Texas liberals. 4 Paragraph 5 Paragraph 6 Paragraph 7 Paragraph C D E F G

Questions 8 10 Choose the correct letters, A, B, C or D Write your answers in boxes 8 10 on your answer sheet. 8 The bill shows every sign of being passed into A. B. C. D. 9 A. B. C. D. 10 A. B. C. D. Law. Oblivion. A sub law. Penal code. 911 stands for Hospital emergency. Police emergency. Fire brigade emergency. Taxi emergency. Professor Jerry Dowling works in Sam Houston State University. Stanford University. Oxford University. Princeton University.

Questions 11 14 Complete each of the following statements (questions 11 14) with the best endings A G from the box below Write the appropriate letters A G in boxes 11 14 on your answer sheet. 11 Texas liberals have wasted no time making 12 ranch owners along the Rio Grande became upset at 13 In theory, Texas law obliges citizens under attack to 14 Prosecutors and legal experts find it hard to recall a case where a citizen shooting in

A Call the police for help. B The number of Mexican immigrants on their land. C Theyve given a lot or some thought to the election. D Merciless fun of their state representatives. E Consider a retreat before opening fire.

Reading passage 2 A. Even before the British Defence Ministry this week elected to scrap the Royal Navy's only fixed-wing aircraft carrier, nobody imagined that Britannia still ruled the waves or had any of the power that characterized its empire before the two world wars of the last century. Still, as recently as a decade ago, Britain could take solace in its "special relationship" with the sole surviving superpower, earning pride of place among U.S. allies with its readiness to commit substantial numbers of troops to Washington's expeditionary military ventures. Sure, the 46,000 troops the British sent to Iraq for the U.S.-led invasion equalled around one-third of the American force, but the U.S. military was almost 10 times larger than Britain's. In Afghanistan, also, the U.K. committed a force equivalent to one third of the U.S. deployment. Still, in both cases, Britain's contribution dwarfed that of other NATO allies. B. But the defence spending cuts announced this week as part of the British government's massive deficit-cutting austerity program mean that the next time America goes to war in some distant land, it is unlikely to be joined by significant numbers of British squaddies. Besides scrapping (for at least a decade) its naval capacity to project air power overseas, the U.K. will cut its defence budget by 8%, losing 17,000 personnel and cutting back its armoury of tanks and artillery. C. The maximum number of troops that the reconfigured British military will be able to deploy in any new sustained expeditionary operation will be 6,500. While its leaders gamely insist that Britain will continue to "punch above its weight" as a military power, the message for the U.S. in Britain's contraction may be a lot more sobering than simply the retrenchment of military capability by its most trusted ally. Britain's case may have illustrated the iron law that fiscal deficits inevitably corrode a nation's ability to project power beyond its shores. D. Americans may not consider the U.S. an empire, but there's no question that its military is equipped and deployed on an imperial scale. Consider the map of the area of responsibilities of its six Unified Combatant Commands they literally cover the world, like the board-game Risk. U.S. Central Command refers not to the Midwest, but to the territory that runs from Egypt eastwards to the Chinese and Indian borders, and north to the Russian frontier. The Pentagon maintains more than 800 bases beyond the 50 states, and stations close to 300,000 troops abroad. The 2009 U.S. defence budget of $660 billion was more than the combined defence expenditures of the next 17 countries on the spending table. And that budget continues to rise steadily, growing at 4.8% for 2010, a year in which the U.S. economy's GDP growth is likely to be less than 2%. E. Militarily, the U.S. is the British Empire of the 21st Century and then some. But it is policing the world on the back of a colossal $1.5 trillion budget deficit and a staggering $13.5 trillion national debt. Its economy is in the grip of a deep and possibly long-term crisis that shows little sign of reducing an unemployment rate close to 10%, let alone being in a position

to make the desperately needed investments in everything from education to infrastructure necessary to restore long-term competitiveness. F. The Congressional Research Service calculated last September that the U.S. has spent $1.2 trillion on military operations since the 9/11 attacks, and the ongoing commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing the U.S. more than $3 billion a week. American politicians may sound the alarm on the need to slash spending to rein in deficits but those warnings ritually add the rider "except for the military." Still, a Federal government currently borrowing 40 cents of every dollar it spends is likely to struggle to sustain imperial levels of military commitment. G. Don't expect to see a major retrenchment of U.S. military capability any time soon Britain's decline happened slowly, over a century. But the economic laws of gravity suggest that what we saw in Britain this week is a fate that eventually awaits the U.S. military, too. After all, if the massive expansion of the U.S. economy over the past six decades appears to be coming to a close, it's hard to see how the epic expansion of the U.S. military budget over the same period can be sustained. Source: Time Questions You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15 27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 Questions 15 19 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 15 -19 in your answer sheet write TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 15. Nobody imagined that Britannia still ruled the waves. 16. The U.S. is the British Empire of the 21st Century as far as the colonialism is concerned. 17. The US spends extravagantly on its military affairs. 18. The British rules the world even now by its colonial structures. 19. The reconfigured British military will be able to deploy 6500 troops.

Question 20 23 Look at the following topics (questions 20 23) and the list of statements below. Match each topic to the correct statement. Write the correct letter A G in boxes 1 4 on your answer sheet. 20. British military 21. U.S. Central Command 22. The Congressional Research Service

23.

Unified Combatant Commands A Controls the world policies indirectly. B Is very supportive to the US. C Will have a reconfiguration. D The U.S. has spent $1.2 trillion on military operations since the 9/11 attacks. E Works on only politically.

Questions 24 27 Complete the following statements with the correct alternative from the box. Write the correct letter A F in boxes 24 27 on your answer sheet. 24. 25. 26. 27. Britain could take solace in its "special relationship" with American politicians may sound the alarm Fiscal deficits inevitably corrode a nation's ability The U.S. military was almost

A On the need to slash spending to rein in deficits. B To project power beyond its shores. C Would probably ensure that wed want to ally. D Electric propulsion systems. E 10 times larger than Britain's. Reading Passage 3 A. Keeping up with the Joneses is a well-established aspect of the human condition: we want what our friends, neighbours and co-workers have, whether it's a sports car, a high-powered job or cute new shoes. But a new study finds that depending on the nature of your envy benign or malicious, that is you'll pay a premium to either imitate the Joneses or do them one better. B. Researchers from Tilburg University in The Netherlands studied envytriggered behaviour by asking students what they would do in certain social contexts. So, for instance, the authors asked students to imagine that a peer had an iPhone (or an internship, or some other desirable thing) that they coveted. The participants were then asked to imagine feeling

envious and admiring of the fellow student (benign), envious and begrudging (malicious), or simply covetous of the product itself. C. The study results, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, showed a complex pattern of decision making. Participants who felt benign envy said they were willing to pay about $110 more to have an iPhone, after coveting their friend's device. But people who maliciously coveted the iPhone were more likely to pay a premium for a related but different gadget: the BlackBerry. The findings are explained in a statement by the journal. D. "Note that two types of envy exist: benign and malicious envy," the authors explain. "Benign envy exists if the advantage of the other person is deserved, and motivates people to attain a coveted good or position for themselves. This more motivating type of envy makes people pay an envy premium for the products that elicited their envy." On the other hand, malicious envy occurs if the other person is thought to be undeserving; it evokes a desire to "pull down" the other person. E. The study reveals that our impulse to judge the deservingness of others has more to do with how we view ourselves than with anything to do with our peers: Envy is not the result of all upward comparisons to another person, but primarily from those with people that are superior in a domain that is important to oneself. Social comparisons are more likely to be made with people who are initially similar, and indeed the more similar another person is, the more intense the envy is expected to be if that person is better off. F. Benign envy has certain logic to it: you wish to be urbane and wealthy, so when you see a similar striver enjoying a new status object, you believe you deserve it as well and you are willing to pay a premium to get it. Meanwhile, malicious envy employs a very different system of thought: if someone you've deemed junior to you suddenly gets an object you want, you wish to prove your superiority by degrading their new possession. To do that, you'll pay a premium for a competitive but slightly different item. G. Benign envy, as its name suggests, isn't necessarily destructive (except maybe on your bank account), but malicious envy does result in negative behaviour. From the study: Maliciously envious people feel frustrated and try to level the difference with the superior others by pulling those others down. Benignly envious people also feel frustrated, but they try to level the difference by moving themselves up. It is important to note here that both types of envy are not associated with a motivation to be like the other, but rather they motivate behaviour to solve the inequality by increasing one's own (benign envy) or decreasing the other's relative standing (malicious envy). So the next time you find yourself jealously eyeing a friend's new flat-screen TV or designer handbag, stop to consider what's motivating those feelings. The price of keeping up can get pretty steep.

Source: Time Questions You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28 40 which are based on Reading Passage 3. Questions 28 32 The passage has seven paragraphs labelled AG. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet. NB: You may use any letter more than once. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. Imitation of the Joneses is a quite phenomenon. Envy is not the result of all upward comparisons to another person . Authors had a test of envy and peer jealousy among university students. Pet Airways, as its name indicates, is dedicated to animals. Benignly envious people also feel frustrated, but they try to level the difference by moving themselves up.

Questions 33 36 Complete the sentences below with words taken from Reading Passage 3. Use NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 33-36 on your answer sheet.

33. 34. 35. 36.

Malicious envy employs a very different . Benign envy exists if the advantage of the other . The participants were willing to pay about $110 more to . Jealousy can lead a person to .

Questions 37 40 Complete the summary of the paragraphs A C below.

Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet. Depending on the nature of your envy you'll pay a premium to either imitate 37 Researchers from Tilburg University in The Netherlands studied 38 .. The participants were then asked to imagine feeling envious and admiring of 39 . People who maliciously coveted the iPhone were more likely 40